Senate Tax Cut Bill Heads Toward Passage?
by Stephen Lendman (stephenlendman.org - Home - Stephen Lendman)
Drafting legislation is like sausage-making, neither a pretty sight. Comparing one to the other is offensive to sausage makers.
Simply Sausage president Stanley Feder earlier said “(w)ith legislation you have hundreds of cooks - members of Congress, lobbyists, federal agency officials, state officials.”
“In sausage making, you generally have one person, the wurstmeister, who runs the business and makes the decisions” - the outcome predictable every time.
US legislation is especially messy when designed to serve privileged interests, harming most Americans in the process, how it usually works.
The GOP tax cut bill is the latest example - a scam to benefit corporate predators and America’s super-rich, a tax increase for millions of others, a dagger at the heart of social justice, notably affecting Medicare and Medicaid.
In mid-November, House members passed their version of tax cutting, largely along party lines, all undemocratic Dems against it along with 13 Republicans.
After four days of debate, Senate Finance Committee members approved their tax cut legislation along party lines.
On Tuesday, Senate Budget Committee members voted the same way, advancing the scheme toward a floor vote, perhaps on Friday.
GOP skeptics Susan Collins, Bob Corker and Ron Johnson switched from negative to positive-sounding on the measure.
The GOP plan has nothing to do with stimulating economic growth and jobs creation - everything to do with transferring more wealth from ordinary Americans to corporate predators and super-rich ones.
Former Reagan budget director David Stockman slammed the measure earlier, again yesterday, calling it “a dog's breakfast of K-Street/Wall Street pleasing tax cuts, narrowly focused revenue raisers that will be subject to withering attack on the Senate floor, nonsensical vote-driven compromises and outrageous fiscal gimmicks” - notably by “sunsetting…individual tax provision(s) after 2025.”
The measure becomes a tax increase for millions of middle and lower income Americans. Gimmicks aside, it’ll add $2.2 trillion to the national debt over the next decade, perhaps much more.
Stockman believes the measure is too corrupted to be enacted into law because by 2027 “not one of the 150 million individual filers get a tax cut; the reduction for small business ‘pass-thru’ payers is zeroed-out; and the balance of the bill consists of an incredible $202 billion of tax increases in 2027 compared to current law.”
Astonishing! The GOP tax cut scam is a stealth tax increase on 150 million households, along with all the other harm it causes.
Stockman: “(T)he great barrier to growth in America today is not the tax code, but the Fed and its massive inducements for speculation on Wall Street, rather than investment and growth on main street.”
That needs fixing, what Congress isn’t addressing in its rush to ram through the destructive GOP tax cut scam.
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